The Murphy Method Blog

Folks, I’m going to break away from those excellent postings from Kaufman Kamp to tell you about something else good that happened this week. As many of you know I’ve been learning to fly, and on Wednesday I got my license! It’s been a huge 7-month-long project, studying and flying all I could, but it finally happened. I took the flying examination (called a “check ride”), and passed with– yes, I’ll say it– flying colors.

This flight exam was in the same old rusty Cessna 172 you see in that photo above, registration number N51056. I’ve flown about 121 hours so far, mostly in that same airplane, and the plane and I have come to know each other pretty well. Now I’ll start flying a couple of times a week just for fun, in this airplane and others, and enjoy the flights even more, because now there’s no pressure about making the grade. Although I expect to keep learning forever, now I’m an independent pilot.

And what (to ask it again), does this have to do with playing music? A lot. The more I fly, the more connection I see with music. You’ll have some goals when you learn to play, such as playing your first tune all the way through without stopping or losing your place; being able to play your tunes while your teacher plays rhythm for you on a guitar; someday being able to play along with the group in a jam session, and maybe even performing at parties, small concerts, at church, or for folks at nursing homes. But along the way, you really hit a landmark when you can play your tunes standing up, at a reasonable speed, in a jam session. That’s what Murphy sometimes calls “becoming an independent banjo player” (or mandolin player, or fiddle, or guitar, or whatever). Although you still have lots you can learn, you might say that that’s when you’ve earned your license. And it’s good.

Red

Tags: flying, jamming, Learning By Ear, red

This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 5:17 am and is filed under By Red, jamming, Learning By Ear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.